Stories about dance

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“So you have decided to keep humiliating us in front of people,” he said with a roaring voice.
His beloved Baba had slapped Zahid on wearing red lipstick again.
“You are a boy, a man! The only waris (successor) of our hundreds of acres of land. I will beat you black and blue if I ever find you doing anything girly again.”
Zahid had tightly clenched a broken red lipstick in his hands. Baba was continuously lecturing him about masculinity but surprisingly, all this scolding was appearing so rhythmical to him. Baba was admonishing him but he was dancing in his mind, wrapping red dupatta and responding ...

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I am blessed to enjoy rhythm in my life, and blessed to have parents who put no restrictions on my body’s movement to music. I grew up as a typical uninteresting teenager; music blaring from my room, no matter what time of the day or night it was. I was so obsessed with music that even my telephone conversations with my girlfriends mostly consisted of singing along to the lyrics of the latest popular songs.
All this was made possible due to growing up in a home in Lahore which provided space and privacy without disturbing the peace of other family members. My ...

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Director cum producer, Wajahat Rauf, is back to entice moviegoers with another road film Lahore Se Aagey. The upcoming rom-com is a sequel to his directorial debut Karachi Se Lahore (2015).
Although, Rauf’s first film received mixed reviews, his new project has been a much anticipated movie this year with Yasir Hussain and Saba Qamar as the lead pair. The short teaser, and now the trailer, has received an overwhelmingly positive response. The audience is rather pleased as it promises the right balance of humour, romance, music, and dance.
As per the trailer, the spinoff chiefly focuses on Karachi Se Lahore’s character Moti, played ...

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I remember the hype that Step Up (2006) brought with it when it was first released. For dance lovers and enthusiasts, this was a fresh wave of cinematic representation where new and unorthodox dancing styles were given centre-stage on mainstream media. Before this, the only hits this genre had managed to bring included musicals like Grease (1978) and Dirty Dancing (1987) or conventional dance movies like Save the Last Dance (2001) and Shall We Dance (2004).
Of course, the Step Up trilogy further paved way for hits like Magic Mike (2012) and Black Swan (2010) which, though different in terms ...

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This one TED-talk made me rethink my concept of education. Education for me had always been about rote learning and grades. I mean, if I could repeat the day’s lesson verbatim I was one of the most intelligent students. But if that logic applies, then a parrot can repeat things perfectly too so it is probably the most intelligent of all life forms. But parrots aren’t educated. Do you see my conundrum? Education should be about more than just about becoming literate, it should also facilitate creativity and originality.
In my opinion, formal education is producing a workforce conditioned to be conformist; ...

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It’s been a few months into your first desk job and you realise that you are expanding horizontally. You can physically feel your behind increase in size as you sit heavily, day after day on a swivel chair in front of your stupid screen. Not only does a nine to five (read nine to eight) job drain you psychologically, because you would much rather be reading a book or travelling the world than sitting in an office signing off emails with ‘regards’, you’re also physically degenerating into a lazy, large, unhealthy mass.
And this is precisely why I started Zumba.
Before you confuse Zumba ...

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If you knew the world would soon end,
And we both would perish,
When this moment is spent,
This jiffy would die and with it,
Our spirits would burn and fly!
Would you care, my love, to dance with me,
When we have time to dance,
To the end of the sky?
Let’s dance, my love,
Before dreams are lost,
And longing is rusted,
In our hearts and eyes,
For the dead dance not,
Nor ashes cry!
Before the lights are out,
And the doors are closed,
Wild hearts are muted,
No more they pine and sigh.
Here! Before the world ends,
Dance with me, my love!
Dance to the end of the sky!
Or would you not ...

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Weddings are festive and fun occasions. They are probably the only events in the country where both sexes get a chance to mingle and dance together without someone giving judgemental stares and uttering the words ‘haw haye’.
Depending on how close or how you’re related to the bride or groom, these festivities can range from being highly fun to chaotic to downright boring. But at every wedding, you are bound to come across different and “special” types of wedding guests.
1) The enthusiast
This is the person who is even more excited about the wedding than the bride and groom. He or ...

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Step aside, Pitbull. There’s a brand new way to be inappropriately close to women way out of your league!
It is a lesson not just for Pakistanis but for all humanity, for all men and children who are aiming to be men. Arbaz Khan, the pre-teen pre-pubescent boy, whose baby fat is still probably lodged in places that only the next five years can remove, shakes his groove with a woman old enough to be his mother.
My eyes widen as does Mathira’s cleavage.
My throat constricts as Mathira belts out one tuneless note after another. Not that I am against sex-positive feminism or against ...

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Azaan’s over. Everyone has gone back to their rooms. The street’s a mess. I smile as a jalebi floats in a puddle nearby. People rarely treat food with respect anymore. I take out a cigarette and begin to light it. Bloody cigarettes; they’ve started costing me more than my clients pay me to begin with! One of the girls, Razia, walks out the curtain-door and sits next to me.
My lighter isn’t working again! Damn it! God bless Razia for handing me hers.
We both stretch our legs over the stairs, lean back and take long drawls of our cigarettes. We barely ...